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East Asian literature. | ||
Tags: Asian Languages | Literature | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bleuenvert Newbie Canada Joined 4555 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 8 28 May 2012 at 6:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been waffling between learning mandarin or Japanese for a while now. I feel mandarin is a much more practical language. But I have fallen in love with Japanese
culture. I have recently been delving into Eastern thought and wanted to read texts before translation into English. How often are Chinese texts translated into Japanese? From a literature point of view, which language would be more practical? I would imagine Chinese texts translated into Japanese would be a lot more accurate then if they were translated into English. How many Buddhist/Taoist texts are translated into Chinese and Japanese? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4923 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 8 29 May 2012 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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taoist texts are originally in chinese. And I think all indian initial buddha texts have a chinese version. The problem is, they wont be in modern chinese. And reading translation from tradictional chinese is not better than reading them in English, I thought. Learning tradictional chinese is simply too big a project.
I dunno how many chinese literature were translated into japanese, but a lot of japnese one wre translated into chinese with fine qualities. If not for anime and tv shows I may not wanna learn japanese because chinese translation is fine enough, better than some original English literature translations. In the case of practical, the difficulty of grammar and writing system should be taken into consideration. Besides, japan has good thrilled novels and "light novels", which I read in chinese translation a lot, online, uncopyrighted but definitely near professional. It has some good poems, too. Some world famous writers and nobel winners. But personally I dont like the japanese literatury (contrary to ”lighted” anime youth or whatsoever more active)writing style……Just fail to catch their point and humanity and fed up with endless meaningless repeated description, which make masterpieces unreadable. Its not like the“ur didnt reach the age/the condition” to understand, its that I know the style is not my thing. Take dazai osamu's no longer human for example, a lot of people,love it, find themselves in it, I read it three times and still cant find harmony. So its up to you. Chinese literature, its not my place to breg about them but some of them do touch my soul, and I love tradictional ones, too. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4923 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 3 of 8 29 May 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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taoist texts are originally in chinese. And I think all indian initial buddha texts have a chinese version. The problem is, they wont be in modern chinese. And reading translation from tradictional chinese is not better than reading them in English, I thought. Learning tradictional chinese is simply too big a project.
I dunno how many chinese literature were translated into japanese, but a lot of japnese one wre translated into chinese with fine qualities. If not for anime and tv shows I may not wanna learn japanese because chinese translation is fine enough, better than some original English literature translations. In the case of practical, the difficulty of grammar and writing system should be taken into consideration. Besides, japan has good thrilled novels and "light novels", which I read in chinese translation a lot, online, uncopyrighted but definitely near professional. It has some good poems, too. Some world famous writers and nobel winners. But personally I dont like the japanese literatury (contrary to ”lighted” anime youth or whatsoever more active)writing style……Just fail to catch their point and humanity and fed up with endless meaningless repeated description, which make masterpieces unreadable. Its not like the“ur didnt reach the age/the condition” to understand, its that I know the style is not my thing. Take dazai osamu's no longer human for example, a lot of people,love it, find themselves in it, I read it three times and still cant find harmony. So its up to you. Chinese literature, its not my place to breg about them but some of them do touch my soul, and I love tradictional ones, too. Too lazy to check spelling and grammar, sorry. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4923 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 4 of 8 29 May 2012 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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mmm, double post it, cant find the delete botton.
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| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5233 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 5 of 8 30 May 2012 at 4:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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As far as modern literature goes, Mandarin and Japanese each have more literature than one person can read in a lifetime. It's just a matter of which literature you're more interested in.
Buddhist and Taoist texts were written in Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese is very different from both modern Chinese and Japanese. The texts have been translated into both modern languages. But like lindseylbb said, then you'd be reading a translation, and that's no different from reading a translation in English. So you should not think that you have to study Mandarin to read Eastern philosophy. You can learn Japanese instead, or skip it and go straight to Classical Chinese. There are textbooks in English for learning Classical Chinese, so you don't have to know a modern East Asian language first. One thing to keep in mind: Classical Chinese doesn't have its own pronunciation. I mean, it did centuries ago, but nowadays everyone pronounces according to their own language. Mandarin speakers give it a Mandarin pronunciation, Cantonese pronounce it like Cantonese, Koreans like Korean, etc. So when you study it, since you like Japanese culture, I recommend learning the Japanese pronunciation. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6116 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 6 of 8 30 May 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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spring view
This site has Chinese poems with English translations. I don't have much of a clue myself what's going on, but it is still interesting. I study Japanese, not Chinese, but still, quite a few of the characters are recognizable. I ran into this one because I found a reference in an anime of all things. So these old writings are still part of the modern cultures and are referenced. You see this if you work on an east Asian language long enough. This site also links to some interesting essays discussing how it was translated. Chinese Poems 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bleuenvert Newbie Canada Joined 4555 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 8 31 May 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
Wasn't Japanese influenced a lot by Chinese during its development? Maybe I am wrong, But i would think a Japanese translation of a chines e text would be a little more accurate then its English counter part. So ancient Chinese is essentially a dead language? Only used for reading old texts? Is it considerably harder then its modern counterpart? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5774 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 8 of 8 31 May 2012 at 8:08am | IP Logged | |||||
Japan had no native writing system prior to the introduction of Chinese characters from Korea. As such, early Japanese writings were written in Chinese. The spoken language, however, was and remains very distinct from the Chinese language. To accommodate this, over time the Japanese adapted this writing system to their own language, from kanbun on to phonetic syllabaries, starting with man'yougana and culminating in the development of hiragana and katakana. The latter, these kana, make it possible to write Japanese as Japanese, verb morphology and all, but there hasn't been a similarly major revolution in orthography in over 1000 years. Even with Chinese writing (or kanbun) occupying a spot of prestige among the educated classes much as Latin once did in the West, that's still a lot of time for drift and separation.
I would think the individual translator matters much more than his target language. One might argue that the Japanese share a similar "Asian" worldview and, regardless of language, have a better understanding of China and its people, but I would say that thousands of years later all cultures are sufficiently removed for that to not matter. Even if the Japanese translation was objectively more accurate and insightful, you would still have to weigh that against the benefits of reading in your native language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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